Images are often formed on a cloth garment (e.g., a shirt) via a heat transfer method or a direct-to-garment printing method. Depending on the cloth garment imaged, it is often desired to pre-treat the garment before forming the image. The pretreatment can help keep the ink on the surface of the garment and/or form a strong bond between the image and the garment.
For example, a treatment composition can be sprayed directly onto the garment. However, this spray method can apply the treatment composition unevenly across the surface area (and/or the thickness) of the garment. For instance, the treatment composition may be applied heavily in certain areas and lightly in other areas. Thus, due to the uneven application of the treatment composition to the garment, the depth that the ink penetrates the fibrous substrate across the cloth may be uneven, resulting in an image that will appear uneven. This unevenness is especially apparent when forming an image on a dark cloth using lighter colors (e.g., white).
Alternatively, the garment can be dipped and/or submerged into the treatment composition. However, this application results in the treatment composition being applied across the entire surface area of the garment. Thus, even the areas of the garment that are not going to be imaged (i.e., that will be free from an image) have the treatment composition present, resulting in wasted treatment composition.
Therefore, a need exists for an improved method of pretreating a cloth garment prior to forming an image thereon.
Repeat use of reference characters in the present specification and drawings is intended to represent the same or analogous features or elements of the present invention.